


Speak of The Wolf

by undercovercaptain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Sansa escapes the Vale, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Benjen's been too long out in the Wilderness, F/M, In which Benjen finds his way back to the Wall, Marriage for protection, Thrown together by circumstance, Uncle/Niece Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercovercaptain/pseuds/undercovercaptain
Summary: What was it he wanted from her? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which wasn’t hers to bestow. Only a listener, mayhaps; only someone who would see him. Or what remained of him, at least....an AU in which Benjen returns from Beyond-the-Wall, dragging him into the game of thrones and the uncertain fate of Winterfell.





	1. On Powdered Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [framboise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/gifts).



> A gift for framboise, who inspired me to write this after reading her excellent 'what tomorrow will bring' :)
> 
> As mentioned in the tags, this fic features an avuncular marriage/relationship between Benjen Stark and Sansa Stark so if that doesn't float your boat maybe don't read this! Otherwise, enjoy! :)

He had been lost for so long; the snow blanketing and concealing everything in its wake, turning his vision to white, his blood to ice. For so long had he wandered, looking for possible survivors from his small band of black brothers, the ones who had accompanied him on his search for the missing Ser Waymar Royce and his party. At night, when the north-wind blew across expanses of white, tossing up snowdrifts like a lady’s handkerchief, and through ancient trees like a skeletal rattle, he sometimes thought he could hear the sound of his men’s muffled voices, of Othor singing his bawdy songs by the campfire — _The Lusty Lad_ , _Her Little Flower_ , _The Dornishman’s Wife_ : songs that had warmed them on those cold, unforgiving nights tracking through the Haunted Forrest.

            Early on he and his men had set blazes in the trees to mark their way, but that was so long ago now. The chill of so many endless days lost wandering had seeped into his bones and numbed his senses: frustration set in, uneasiness brewed, but still he kept searching, doubling back and circling round until his path became so confused he could hardly find his way. It was as if some force of nature kept turning him round, skewing his path and muddling his directions. He could not explain it, for he knew the Haunted Forest better than any black brother and as well as any wildling that dwelled there, yet try as he might, he could not find his way back south. All he could do was keep on, hunting and foraging to survive, eating whatever he chanced upon just to sustain his strength: hare and ermine, hedge garlic, wood sorrel and tea from boiled pine needles.

            Though there were wildlings in the Haunted Forest he never came across any; he seemed perpetually alone and this solitude unnerved him. It was a state of being he could not wholly trust, because out of the stillness, out of the quiet, that is when they came, wearing their armour of shifting colours and their eyes like burning ice, so bright but so cold. The kind of cold that bites, that stings and freezes the blood, that makes your limbs grow heavy and your lungs ache with every quaking breath.

            It had been like something out of one of Old Nan’s stories, the day he saw them, the way they had suddenly appeared, how they had surrounded him and his men in an instant. A different sort of life, something inhuman but living and laughing, laughing as they swarmed around them, laughing as his men’s blades shattered like a looking glass dropped upon a stone floor. Hollow laughter, like wind through trees and branches snapped underfoot. They were cruel and savage, uncaring of the blood they spilled or the lives they took. Tall and gaunt, like spindles made of weirwood, with skin as pale as milk; his men were fumbling fools compared to their swiftness, their brutal elegance. Their icy blades had cut through his men’s ringmail like scissors through silk; the sound they made at the touch of live steel akin to a wounded animal, high and piercing, screaming out in pain before it was silenced with the meeting of flesh.

            He’d managed to rally those of his men not slain, had managed to mount a horse and point it south. The sound of heavy hooves rapidly thudding against the snowy forest floor had filled his ears as his pushed his steed on and on. They were behind him, he thought, they were right behind him, those few surviving men, he was leading them home. But when he chanced to look over his shoulder they were not there, not even their horses remained. He was alone.

            This was what became of Ser Waymar and his party. This was what was out there, what was hiding in plain sight, beneath the cover of ice and snow. This was what had sent Gared mad with fright, unable to answer his brother’s questioning. He had escaped this terror and they had sent him to his death for it. Were they the same group that had attacked Benjen and his men or were there more out there? How many and for how long could the Wall hold them at bay? His men were dead, dead or turned into wights. He knew this, deep down, and yet still he hoped he might find someone, anyone, lost in the forest like him. For the lone wolf dies but the pack survives, that is how the old saying goes. And yet he was alone, save for a horse that was not his and the cawing of ravens circling overhead. He was alone.

            He felt sure that the cold would get him before anything else; it was as though winter had set up home in his very marrow. Hunkered down and huddled up against tree roots, he would try to remember what it was like to be warm: to feel sweat running down his back as he sparred with Ned and Brandon in the training yard as their father watched on; the prickle of steam on his face as he ran past hot-pools in the Godswood with Lya racing up ahead; the warmth of his mother’s chambers as she held him close and sung him a lullaby from the age of the First Men. Days long past. When life was simple, pure and innocent. The life of children with no thought for lovers, marriages or vows. Childhood days with childish cares, long gone, long past, never to return.

            With only a horse for company, Benjen’s ears became ever more attuned to the murmurings of the forest around him: almost every species of tree seemed to have its own voice. At the passing of an icy breeze the pines would sob and moan no less distinctly than they rocked; the alder whistled as it battled with itself; the birch hissed amidst its quiverings; the spruce rustled as it shook. When daylight began to wane, he would often find himself sitting quite still, his back pressed against rough bark, as he listened to how the trees to the left and right of him wailed or chanted to each other as if in song; how the bushes and other woodland shapes would catch the note, lowering it to the tenderest cry; and finally, how the hurrying gust would then plunge itself southwards, its song ending, to be heard no more.

            These days he often felt as if he was barely there, barely living, and that to feel the solid weight of his long-sword as he hacked up firewood reminded him of his own existence. As a boy, Benjen believed death to be a big, sudden thing: the abrupt thwack of Ice coming down hard upon the block, like a huge owl swooping out of the night sky to carry you off. But really death is slow. Death is like a thief who comes to your homestead night after night, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, until one day you walk around your home and you discover that there is nothing left, nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. It has become but a hollow cell. And so then you lie down upon the cold, bare floor and you close your eyes to life forever. Surely the Gods had had their chance to free him, to guide him back south, and yet for reasons known to them alone, they had pinned him to ill fortune; knifed to the hilt with fate.

 

* * *

 

Many moons had passed, perhaps even a year. A year of fruitless wandering. Today, as with most days, had an eerie silence to it, hanging about him like a death shroud, muffling and dampening everything. All was quiet save for the wind; a crescent moon that had been visible all afternoon was just now beginning to brighten against the darkening sky. His camp for that night was a little dell somewhere deep in the Haunted Forest; the overhanging boughs of the surrounding trees somewhat protecting him from the light snowfall that was starting to pick up in ferocity.

            His eyes surveyed the area, glancing between the quaking trees, delving into the snow-covered underbrush. He absentmindedly watched as the lofty spruces bent towards one another, like giants who were whispering secrets. After a few seconds of repose, they fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind.

            Sometimes, he would imagine that the wind was calling out to him, breathy blusters that sounded like voices, his name elongated upon the gale, desolate and lamenting. With every day near the same, his loneliness cut through him like a knife: he would see and hear things that weren’t really there, just to fill the emptiness, the endless human silence. It was as if something born of the snowy desolation, born of the darkness and the silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of the night, something that lay betwixt terror and wonder, had dropped from the vast wintery spaces down into his soul, calling out to him.

            He was crouched over his small fire, its sparks just beginning to catch and burst into flame, when he saw her: standing still and motionless beside a tall birch tree, the deathly pallor of her skin as pale as the bone whiteness of its bark. Her figure appeared to him slight and wasted, her dark hair streaming down her back like spilled ink, unstirred by the earthly wind that swirled around her. For a moment, a very brief moment, he could swear he smelt the heavy perfume of winter roses, could feel it stroking the walls of his icy lungs like a caress. But then it was gone. Her sad grey eyes were fixed upon him, her gaze as unblinking as it was unflinching. Why did his mind do such things? Turn on him, rend him, dig its claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it is much the same with the mind.

            The fire grew, its tendrils of heat reaching upwards and dancing before him. He continued to watch her until the blinking of his eyes, made watery by the ash and flames, made her vanish. An apparition, an illusion, a false memory pieced together from disparate rememberings. She was Lyanna and yet she was not. Not his sister with her cheeks flushed and blooming, with mud streaked along her skirts from running. No. Not her. So why did he have to picture her thus, so frail and corpse-like? Perhaps to punish himself: a sharp reminder of the consequences of his boyhood actions, for she had held his gaze as if she knew all the sorrow in his heart. But she was not there. Not truly, not like before. She had not been there for a very long time.

            He didn’t know which was worse, a past he couldn’t regain or a present that might surely destroy him if he looked at it too clearly. As a callow lad he had always wanted to be older than he was, less hopelessly green, not the wolf pup, not a boy but a man of experience. He had wanted purpose, something for himself, a third son’s fantasy of honour and glory. In many ways his initial path towards the Night’s Watch had very much mirrored his nephew’s: he was a lesser relation, hardly destined for a holdfast and fine lady wife of his own, and the Night’s Watch was an ancient and noble institution. It was a suitable career for neither the heir nor the spare, and that black brother, all those years ago at the tourney at Harrenhal, had seemed to him more magnificent than any gleaming knight of the Kingsguard: something higher, purer, in service of the entire realm and not at the beck and call of bickering lords and tyrannical kings.

            It pained him to think that perhaps he had been to Jon what that black brother had been to him: an unobtainable ideal. It had shocked what little he had left of his innocence out of him when upon his arrival at the Wall, all those years ago, he discovered that the Harrenhal recruiter, Einarr Knott had been his name, was long dead. An immovable chill had seized him on a ranging expedition, which took so fast and strong a hold that it could not be shifted; his eyes had stayed open, wild with quiet delirium, until the very end they had said. What irony this world possessed, for now he too seemed bound to the same fate as Einarr. Left to succumb. Left to go mad with loneliness. _Gone mad_ is what they say, and sometimes _Run mad_ , as if mad is a different direction, like north; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay exactly where you are, routed to the spot. And somebody else comes in.

            A little to his side, his horse snuffled as a cold breeze rustled through the leaves, causing her legs to shift nervously, throwing up little tufts of snow. The sturdy mare had belonged to Jafer Flowers and still bore his provisions bound to her saddle: a water canteen, a small pan, a tinderbox, his bedroll and several fillets of dried salted herring, which by now were quite dwindled in number. A dead man’s hoard, for he was dead, wasn’t he. There was no denying that now. It surprised him a little to think he’d lied to himself this long. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was decidedly bleak. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetness of spirit did not exist. With every year that had passed amongst prospectless lordlings and foul-tongued criminals, Benjen had felt the boy he had once been slipping further and further away. In truth, he had willed him away, had neatly scooped out his remaining innocence like the yolk from a hard-boiled egg, leaving the rest of him bloodless, congealed and hollow.

            Around him the forest grew silent, the wind sinking south. The horse stamped a hoof on the hard ground and then went still. Benjen tried to quiet his breathing so he could see and hear through the encroaching night. His eyes caught now and then on a stump or a shadowy spot among the trees. But the dark and the snow were now too thick for him to really see beyond the first line of firs. Still, he paid attention, noticing something about the underbrush. How tangled up in itself it was, how dense and secret. It was not a matter of one tree after another, it was all the trees together, aiding and abetting one another and weaving into one mass.

            Something was watching him.

            At times like this he wondered whether or not he was already dead. This was no life: waiting in the darkness, in silence, for something he had yet to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> \- Both Othor and Jafer Flowers are two named men who accompany Benjen Beyond-the-Wall, so I thought I'd give them a mention. Einarr Knott, however, is my own invention. The name is of Old Norse origin, derived from the elements ein "one, alone" and arr "warrior." It also apparently shares the same roots as einherjar, the word for the slain warriors of Valhalla.
> 
> *Chapter Score* - Out of Horse, from The Revenant
> 
> Let me know what you thought of this and if you'd like to read more!
> 
> Cappy x


	2. Creature Come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely response to the first chapter! Hope you enjoy this new one :)
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

The wind had stopped. A vast silence reigned over the snowy dell. The space itself was now a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint of laugher in it, but of a laugher more terrible than any sadness — a laughter that was as mirthless as the face of a heart tree, a laughter as cold as hoarfrost and partaking the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility and effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted North. It was an Other come to drain him of his blood.

            Benjen rose slowly, moving so that his small fire blazed behind him. His hand tightened its grip on his sword’s pommel. The Other was silent as it slid forward from between the trees. It was alone, like him, and in its hand was a longsword no human man could’ve forged: it was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. Benjen’s first encounter with such a creature came rushing back, as though it had been but yesterday. Mayhaps this thing had been stalking him ever since, knowing he was the only one left, but letting him succumb to madness and loneliness before finally finishing him.

            The Other edged closer, its feet making no sound upon the snow covered ground. Benjen raised his sword, already knowing the inevitability of his fate. And yet he was not weighed down by this realisation, for this was no life he was living, so what did it matter if he relinquished it? He was not half living, or even quarter living anymore. He was simply a bag of bones in which the spark of life fluttered faintly. _Come at me then_ , he thought, stealing himself and digging his heals into the snow. _End me._

            The Other neared, its frozen eyes fixed on the moonlight running cold along the metal of Benjen’s sword. The creature said something in a language he did not know; its voice like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words strangely frank, as though recognising that they were two lone beings, here amidst the snow. They circled one another, slowly, until Benjen threw caution to the wind and lunged forward, no longer wishing to continue this game of cat and mouse. He was a killer, just like the Other, he too was a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in this hostile environment where only the strong survived. He was not some fledgling recruit, quaking in his boots at the first feel of snow and ice. No, he was the First Ranger. And he was a wolf, a Stark of Winterfell, and no vows could truly make him forget it.

            Their swords clashed, hardened ice and steel hissing in the cold, still air. They sparred, they parried, until one of Benjen’s parries came a beat too late. The Other’s pale sword sliced through his ringmail, piercing his side. Benjen did not cry out in pain or surprise, for he had expected this blow, had wanted it even. Blood welled and bubbled up to the surface of his black leathers, steaming in the cold. The droplets appeared as red as weirwood sap where they landed upon the pure white snow.

            He felt strangely numb, as though from a great distance he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him as he stumbled backwards, his sword slipping from his fingers to the snowy forest floor. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he was aware of the blood seeping out of his body from the smell of rusted copper filling the cold air. But this was all very distant, for it was no longer his body and it all seemed so far away. As he edged feebly away from his assailant, his head lolled backwards like a drunkard’s. He found himself looking directly up into the sky, to the northern lights flaming above, and he wondered to himself if those cold burning spectres might not draw his breath, his very soul, out of his chest and into the stars.

            His knees buckled, the blood from his wound flowing slowly into the pure whiteness beneath him as his weakened legs met the snow. He paid no mind to the creature before him, dragging out his end for its own pleasure. He feared not the finishing blow that was surely to come. For life is a strange thing, isn’t it? Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon you and you throw down your hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. Benjen’s gloved hands buried themselves in the snow, his fists numbly clenching, clutching at nothing.

            Yes, it is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and before that all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backwards, fighting to the last. Benjen’s mouth tugged into a wry, forlorn smile. Ah, yes, death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt us. Yet we love life and we hate death. Yes, it is very strange.

            He hardly noticed when an arrow sliced suddenly through the air. He barely heard the hiss of surprise and then of anguish that swiftly followed. And yet he felt the sudden rush of steam as it kissed his face; feeling for a moment that he was back home, in the Godswood by the hot-pools, beneath the red leaves of the heart tree; red against white, bleeding. Slowly, his head drooped down, his breath coming out shallow. His eyes seemed to roll about it his head for a moment before they lighted on the puddle before him where the Other had once stood. Lying in the midst of the pool lay a primitively made arrow, tipped with a flinty, black arrowhead.

            Sluggishly, he reached out to touch it, his knees tipping forward so that he was on all fours; blood still dripping from the gash in his side. But he quickly retracted his hand, as it was bitingly cold to the touch, as was the water that surrounded it. Benjen dumbly rocked back onto his heels, groaning as the action wrenched his wound. He pressed a hand to the gash and it came away bloody. His dull eyes roamed the dell, searching for the owner of the dragonglass arrow, but there was no one there. Not even his horse remained, for she had bolted soon after the Other had appeared.

            He had been saved and yet deserted. If he were to succumb to his injury, if he were to fall dead in these woods, nothing would rush to his aid. The north wind would blow down from the glaciers, the ground would stay frozen and the ravens would come to tear away at his hardened corpse. Maybe a pack of wolves would eventually find its way to his carcass, and soon he’d be nothing but a pile of strewn bones.

            It was the quiet that pulled him out of his gloom. A quiet full of presence. He tilted his head up and there she was, standing before him, just a few yards away. She stood atop the snow, arms at her sides, a hint of a smile at her pale lips. She wasn’t sad and wasted like before, now she seemed to him both powerful and delicate, like a wild thing that thrives in its place but withers when stolen away. This was the girl Rhaegar had seen. Benjen knew the truth of it, he knew it all and that made him hate the dragon prince, when once he had been in awe. Or no, not hate. That word was too weak, for there was no word in the Common Tongue strong enough to describe his feelings. He could only say that he knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language. But vengeance would never be his for Rhaegar was long dead, and so was Lyanna.

            In front of him, the apparition blinked and her dark lashes glittered with frost. Then she darted away between the trees, her grey gown and white furs trailing behind her.

            “Wait!” he called out. He stumbled to his feet, groaning in pain and clutching at his side. “Wait! Don’t go!”

            His fingers numbly reached for his sword, which had been lying forgotten at his feet. It hurt to bend, but still he persevered, hurriedly slipping it into its scabbard. What was this pain compared to the agony of his slain kin? His brother, father, _murdered_. And Lyanna. He had not known that there could be such pain in the world, and he had twisted and writhed in it, never finding a way to abate it, only to merely dull it for a time. What was a stab wound to the gut compared to that endlessness?

            He was clumsy as he moved to follow her, tripping over his own boots and kicking up snow. She sprinted on ahead, just as she always did when they were children, stopping often to look back at him.

            “Please,” he called again, throat thick. “Please, Lya, wait!”

            A sound came to Benjen’s ears like wind stirring dried leaves or snow blowing across ice, or maybe a whisper from far away. _Shhhh._

            He did not call out again. He ducked beneath tree branches and waded through snow as she led him further and further into an expanse of spruce and pine. As Benjen tried to follow her, an icy fog moved through the forest. Minute crystals of ice filled the air and gathered as hoarfrost along the tree branches and on his lashes and beard. He could see only a few feet into the misty darkness. He stopped occasionally, grasping at tree trunks to hold him upright while sweat froze at his brow. He tried to silence his pained, heavy breathing, but then all he heard was the snow creaking beneath his boots. At times he wasn’t sure he was even following her anymore but instead blindly thrashing through the trees like a bewitched madman. He had lost track of how far he had come; yet he kept on, up into the foothills of the wooded hillside and beyond, to where the trees dwindled to alpine birch shrubs and bilberry bushes; fruit frozen like little marbles. He had to watch his feet to keep from tripping, but each time he looked up she was there waiting for him.

            And then she wasn’t. He stopped, squinted and scanned the snow for her. Once again he became aware of the quiet, the strange calm of the winter Wilderness. He heard twigs crack, only to watch a snowshoe hare bound through the alders and later, as night closed in, an owl hooting from far away.

            “Lyanna!” His voice was soft and croaky. He cleared his throat, and called out again. “Lyanna!”

            A wave of blood went up to his head, his stomach shrinking low in his belly, as if something dangerous had just missed hitting him. It was as if he’d been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if he’d heard other people talking badly of him, behind his back. There was the same flush of shame and dread, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with himself. But he didn’t know where these feelings came from, or what he’d done. His limbs now felt so heavy, his hands numb with more than the cold. His thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced with strange fragments as he swayed forward: _This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air._ He stumbled over his feet and felt himself tumble to the ground.

            He was on the edge of sleep, a sleep that would surely end it all. He rolled onto his back, snow crutching beneath his tired body. He stared heavenwards. The moon was a loyal companion, he mused drowsily. It never leaves. It is always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it is a different version of itself: sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections. In that moment he felt as if he had never existed, no trace of him remained, all the marks he had left were now erased. It was almost the same as being innocent.

            Beneath him, the ground seemed to fall away as he slowly tipped to one side. He felt himself sinking into the loosened earth, into some natural crater with no end. He lacked the strength to resist it; all his strength had left him. He would never again be that boy darting through the winter trees with Lyanna ahead of him, his feet light on the snow and his eyes a mix of stone, storms and river ice. That boy was gone, and Benjen, for the first time, found himself mourning him. He swallowed thickly, tasting blood.

            “I want to go back,” he said earnestly, breathless with fatigue, through the soft, intrusive darkness. “I want to go…home.”

 _Perhaps you will._ He felt rather than saw her smile, for he had closed his eyes and all was veiled in darkness. _Benjen…_ The smell of rich earth melded with the rusted copper of his blood. His wound was now just a dull throb, his heartbeat a steady drumming in his ears. He felt older now than all the days he had seen and all the breath he had drawn. His body was falling, sinking further and further. And he was tired, so tired. Mayhaps he was already dreaming, or already dead for that matter, for very distantly, somewhere deep below, he could hear voices singing in unison, in a tongue as foreign as it was familiar, the sound as pure as winter air. _Benjen…_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, poor Benjen! He's not having the best luck, is he? Another cliffhanger for you guys... ;)
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	3. Fever Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it with the Benjen fic :) thank you for all the lovely comments last chapter. Hope you enjoy this new one.
> 
> (Disclaimer: Don't own anything, special indebtedness to asoiaf and GRRM)

Behind the blackness of his eyelids memories shifted like loose snow in the wind, or a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. He was caught up in the flurry of his past reflections, endlessly shifting and tussling over one another. Images of people and places so long engraved in his mind flickered brightly before him only to then diminish into nothingness. He was home by Winterfell’s burning hearth, then cold at Castle Black, then colder still, lost in the Haunted Forest. On and on it went, but always circling back to Winterfell, for the places we are born always come back to us. They disguise themselves as words, misplaced memories and sweat drenched howlings in the night. They are the way we sometimes wake with a pressure on our chests that is animal-like. Or the way we light a candle in the dark just to see someone we had thought was lost long ago standing there looking at us. In many ways Benjen had wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget him; it waited for sleep, if this could be called sleep, and then cornered him.

            He was in the yard now, sparring with his brothers, getting knocked down by Brandon, who laughed and japed as he hauled him to his feet. _Don’t get so red-faced, little brother! We’ll make a fighter of you yet!_ Somewhere close by he heard Lya’s snigger and Ned’s shushing whisper, somewhere further still the sound of his father’s despairing growl. _Get up boy, get up!_ He heard their voices, heard traces of the words they had spoken as well as words they had never said, words that were of his own making.

            The scene shifted suddenly and he was stepping inside the front hall and slamming the door behind him, making the nearby glass shake in their small leaded panes. _I am Brandon Bloodaxe, the Wolf of Winterfell and you but a half-weaned whelp!_ His brother’s teasing still echoed loudly in his ears. He felt shame and frustration, indignation at not being bigger. He stared at his booted feet then stared at the wall. Through the glass he saw a flock of ravens aloft in the sky only for them to suddenly turn white. He watched them catch the light in such a way that they seemed to disappear against the sky, just as salt dissolves in water. It was strange, but then dreams are strange aren’t they? And this was surely just the fevered dream of a dying man.

            The stone walls darkened around him now, breaking apart to stand tall as trees of spruce and pine all around him; and though twigs snapped underfoot and birds flew overhead he could not hear them. He heard nothing yet saw everything: life in the smallest fledgling bird and death in every withered branch. He saw his mother; though she did not, or could not, see him. She was sitting in front of the heart tree, carving a small animal from a piece of wood, the others she had made lined up beside her feet. Somewhere, far back, he remembered her pale hands beckoning him forward, one of her wooden animals held tight in his pudgy fist as he toddled upon unsteady feet. She had cut them from the tree’s fallen branches, bone white, and had given them paws and faces, some horns, some wings, only hinting at what they truly were and never making them too distinct. They retained their wooden souls.

            He still remembered his mother, though he’d only known her a few scant years: the memory of her sweet kisses pressed against his plump cheeks. She’d died from a bought of sweating sickness, an outbreak that had travelled north from the capital and settled itself in Wintertown, claiming lives in a few short hours and lasting months until it all but vanished into nothingness. Lady Lyarra had been so very fond of the smallfolk.

_Cut wood on a windy day, row to sea in fine weather._ He heard her now: a soft voice rustling through the trees. _Murmur to friends in the darkness: many are the eyes of day._ He wanted to run to her; to hide his face in her neck like a child. _Ask swiftness of a ship, protection from a shield._ To feel the silkiness of his mother’s loose hair between his roughened fingers. _Sharpness from a sword, kisses from a girl._ But his feet held fast and he could not move an inch. About them it was growing darker and darker, and he had to look hard to see her face, which he had meant always to carry with him; the closest, realest face at the very bottom of his memory. But so many years had passed since her untimely death and he had been but a boy then, truly a half-weaned whelp.

            He tried to remember if the past was exactly like this. He wasn’t so sure. He knew it contained these things, these people, but somehow the mix was different. A story told about the past is not the same as the past. For there is the story and there is the truth behind it, and then there is how the story comes to be told: what you leave out and what you keep in. Which is part of the story too.

            As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw the ground covered in white and, in the light of the lantern now held in his hand, snowflakes spinning and falling. The cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless. When his mother lifted her face to look at him, Benjen saw in her dark eyes the joy and sorrow of a lifetime.

            _It’s snowing_ , he said as she rose from her seat to walk towards him, her wooden animals forgotten at her feet. _Mother…_

            Lyarra stood before him now, her pale face aglow in the golden light. He leaned in, feet still stuck. For a moment he allowed himself to take in her fragrance — fresh snow, woodland herbs and birch boughs. For Benjen his mother was a scent. She was a warmth. A leg he clung to. A breath of something green; a gown he remembers her wearing. She had fired him into the world with a bowstring, he told himself, and when he shaped his memories of her, he did not know if they were true. He simply created her as he thought a son shoulder remember his mother.

            He reached out now, his hand just barely touching her loose hair. _What happens to me now, mother? What do I do? Where do I go?_ The lantern sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe. Outside its circle of light lay everything that was strange and frightening. Beyond it the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.

            _What happens to you, Benjen, is what you make happen._ And then she was gone, fading away, the colours of the scene stretching past him like paint smeared across a canvas. In that moment he thought to himself that man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them. He had damned himself to a womanless existence and for what? Now came the darkening sky and the cold wind that passed right through him. All those years ago, when he had first joined the Night’s Watch, he had thought he had been coping quite well. He didn’t howl aloud or punch his first through walls or do any of the things he imagined people might do who felt as he did. But sometimes, unexpectedly, even now, grief pounded over him in waves that left Benjen gasping; and when the waves washed back, he found himself looking out over a brackish wreck, which was illuminated in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that he could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead. There were times when he had wanted an answer. Time’s he had witnessed a black brother’s dying breath, and he wanted to ask him, where have you gone? You were here right beside me just a few seconds ago, and now suddenly you’re somewhere else. How can that be?

            But he would be a liar if he said he did not take some pleasure in killing. The joy of it. The sword joy. He danced in it, seethed in it, the battle joy that Brandon had so often spoken of, the warrior joy. He would feel the Gods moving in him, giving his arm speed and his shield strength, and when it was done, and when he quietly revelled in the blood of the dead, Benjen knew that he was good. Knew he was more than good. But killing the odd wildling could not bring back the dead, for that was what he was truly fighting for, each and every time: some way to bring them back, a sacrifice of the soul and of the body to bring them back. It doesn’t work like that though. Nothing ever works out like he would wish it to. And yet we must live with the decisions we make. For that is what courage is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.

            _Cattle die, kinsmen die, oneself dies just the same._ Whose voice was that? Whistling on the wind and passing right through him. _I know one thing that never dies: the judgement on each one dead._ Deep in the forest a call was sounding, mysteriously thrilling and luring, compelling him forward to plunge into the shadowy forest, on and on, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. He had done this before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth under his paws, the wide sky overhead. The northern lights were flaming coldly overhead, the stars leaping in the frost dance and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow. He found himself howling into the night as he ran, this song of the wolf the very defiance of life, only it was pitched in a minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was really more the pleading of life.

            As he ran his guilt swelled up, churning like a paddle wheel in his stomach. He wanted desperately to flee. But how do you escape something that comes from the inside? At Winterfell, when he was a just a lad, not long after his mother died, there had been a dog; one that kept killing chickens. Rather than kill it, his father had tied a dead hen around the dog’s neck and he had carried it around with him all day until he just laid down in the yard, unmoving, with his eyes shut in the morass of shame. It was cruel. There is nothing so hideously easy as giving someone a bad conscience. Looking back, he sometimes wishes Lya had never told him about the prince. He had thought himself grown then, when really he wasn’t. And though he had discovered the truth too early, by then it already too late. He could easily blame her; blame her for taking his youth from him. But he didn’t. He can’t.

            He must be dreaming he thought, dreaming dreams that for madness and audacity rival those of poppy-eaters. Despite all his running, somehow he had circled back to the Godswood; to the hot pools where he used to play with Lyanna, where steam rose from the water, making their hair curl. _I can dive. Do you know what it feels like when you dive?_ He could remember her voice so clearly and if he closed his eyes it was like she was there. _You let go of everything and get ready and just dive. You can feel the reeds against your legs. They’re green and the water is clear, lighter towards the top, with lots of bubbles._ When he opened his eyes they became wild, searching for her amidst the trees, hoping to find her because he had heard her. He always heard her. But instead he found the opposite: awful affirmation of his fears. She was gone. She was never coming back. His sister was gone.

            _And you glide. You hold your breath and glide and turn and come up, let yourself rise and breathe out._ The echo of her voice rolled over him in waves that left him nauseous and confused. _And then you float. Just float. And all the time with your eyes open. People don’t dive with their eyes shut. Remember that, little brother._ He needed to leave this place, so let himself sink back into the thick liquid of his mind, that warm, black place, without past or future meaning. He wanted to wake up from all this, but couldn’t.

Where was he now? Why couldn’t he wake up? There was no respite here, no pause for breath. He found himself walking up stone steps, the sun beating down hard on his face, making him sweat. With each rise and fall of his feet he felt no closer to the top, instead the steps seemed to stretch on and on forever, their summit lost somewhere against the burning horizon. A few minutes, a few hours, in dreams there is no sense of time. When he finally reached the top it was a flat plane of nothingness, but at its centre was a block and upon that his brother, Ned. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed. With a blink of an eye, his brother’s head suddenly hit the ground and then rolled a little way from his body. Benjen stared at it, frozen, saw Ned’s lips still moving in silent prayer for a few moments while the blood pumped outward from his body and severed head. He was stuck firm in his place by the horror of it, jarred loose only by the sobbing screams of someone calling out, _Father!_ Benjen turned to see Sansa, his niece, fighting against invisible hands that held her tight, crying and wailing, seemingly blind to her uncle’s presence. He quickly leaned down and picked up the head, eyes now open and strangely aware as they stared back at him. He willed the bile back down his throat and forced himself to look into those grey eyes with love for the few moments before awareness dimmed from them. Within seconds, his brother slipped away, his blood running thickly between Benjen’s fingers, under his nails, staining his forearms. 

            He didn’t remember closing his eyes, nor could he remember how that dream ended. Beneath his fingers he could now feel a soft bed of downy moss, could smell its scent in the air. Around him, he could hear things moving, claws in dead leaves, what must have been the wind’s soft sighs, and then opening his eyes his saw them: a pair of golden, catlike eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, poor Benjen! Dude can't catch a break, not even in his dreams! Hope you enjoyed this deeper look into Benjen's character - I really enjoy padding him out with my own interpretations as he's a guy we don't actually know that much in canon. 
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> \- So the strange bits of advice Benjen gets that take a kind of verse form are from The Poetic/Elder Edda, in particualr Hávamál: The lay of the High One (aka Óðinn). I just thought these quotes weirdly fit and added to the overall strange dreaminess I wanted to capture. Plus I'm just a sucker for fitting in Old Norse references into my writing. 
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


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